


when fantasy and reality unite

by PilotInTheStars



Category: Ant-Man (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Introspection, Kinda, Post-Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018), Pre-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Reunions, i had feelings and this is how i worked them out plz enjoy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 00:15:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30030090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PilotInTheStars/pseuds/PilotInTheStars
Summary: Scott and Hope reunite after saving her mother from the quantum realm.
Relationships: Scott Lang/Hope Van Dyne
Comments: 8
Kudos: 32





	when fantasy and reality unite

**Author's Note:**

> This is me repenting for the last ant man fic I wrote. 
> 
> A special shout out to @sharknana29, who named Ant-manda for me and is an all around lovely person and excellent beta reader. Thank you!
> 
> The title is a play on a lyric from Fiona Apple's "Slow Like Honey" and another thank you to Ari for helping me with that one.

Once all of the events of the past few days had died down, and Hope was certain that her parents were safe and the FBI wasn’t on all of their tails, she found herself shrunken down and flying to the townhouse Scott and Luis shared.

 _Was this weird?_ she thought to herself. He didn’t even know she was coming, but ways of communicating with him were slim.

When they had fled the scene, after her mother had returned and the law enforcement had arrived, they had flown back as quickly as possible for him to get back to his house before his FBI agent showed up. 

“If you need me,” Scott said through their comms as she and the ant he was riding turned a corner, “knock on the back door.”

“The back door?” she asked as they landed on the ground, the townhouses surrounding them looking like skyscrapers. His ant, Ant-drea, flew off. 

“Yeah,” he said. “There’s a covering there where the FBI surveillance probably can’t see anyone. At least Luis and I think. And besides-” she could just imagine his grin “-what kind of law abiding citizen like me would be sneaking people into my home just when my parole started?”

She landed under the covering over the back door and grew to normal size, giving a knock. She waited there for a moment, glancing at the overcast sky overhead and hoping it wouldn’t rain, because she had learned the hard way that flying in the suit and rain did not go together. Finally, Hope could hear him walk down the stairs, unlock the door, and open it to surprise. 

“Oh! Hope.”

He quickly ushered her inside. The little landing at the bottom of the stairs was slightly too small for the two of them and they were both very aware of it, but before anything could happen, he quickly went up onto the bottom most step. 

“It’s good to see you,” he said. He added on sheepishly, “I was really worried that you didn’t want to ever see me again.”

 _I should_ _hope I wanted to see you again,_ Hope thought to herself, thinking of the kiss they shared on the dock only a few days before.

“Well, I will say that your comments from a few days ago that I would definitely want to see you again were a little cocky.”

“Yeah,” he said sheepishly. “I thought they might be.” They headed up the stairs. 

She unzipped her hoodie, hanging it on the coat rack.

“Do you want anything to drink? We have…” Scott said, surveying the pantry, before reaching inside and grabbing something. He held up two hot cocoa packets. “This?”

“That works.”

She wanted this to be less awkward. Why couldn’t she find what to say?

“Luis said he’ll be gone for the evening,” Scott said, pulling the mugs out of the microwave. He handed it and a packet of hot chocolate to her. “I’m afraid we don’t have marshmallows, which should be a crime, but we haven’t had the chance to get to the grocery store with the whole Karapetyan proposal.” He poured his packet of hot chocolate into the mug. “Which went well!”

“Did it? I’m glad.”

“Yeah.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “It was worrying. If it didn’t work out with Karapetyan, we’d all be out of a job. And I wouldn’t even know where to begin from there. With any luck, the installation will go well, Karapetyan can put in a good word and we won’t be _that_ close to bankruptcy again.” 

Hope nodded, opening up her hot chocolate packet. 

“So. Are you gonna get a new desk?” she asked, recalling the brief argument he’d had with Luis had over the yard sale table at the X-Con Office. 

They somehow both reached for their mugs at the same time and Hope quickly drew back her hand the second it brushed with his. _Why_ had she turned into a high school girl tonight?

But Scott was the first to speak.

“Hope, can I say something?”

She nodded.

“I missed you,” he said. “I missed you so much and I was convinced you’d never want to see me again and that I could never apologize. And this does feel like a second chance and I don’t want to fuck it up again, and I’m not even sure I deserve it. And I’m sorry.”

Before he could continue on a path that bordered self-deprecation, she stopped him. “Can I kiss you?” He nodded and she threw her arms around his neck, kissing him like she had wanted to for two years.

 _Because_ God _she had missed him too._ He still made her melt inside and she’d been aware of just how much she’d wanted him back a few days ago.

“I missed you too.”

Their mugs of hot chocolate went cold as they eventually found their way up the stairs, spending the evening tangled up in each other’s arms. And by the end she had been thoroughly kissed all over, and had almost bumped her head on the slanted roof of his attic room, and it was safe to say she was the happiest and felt the safest she had been in a long time. 

He was running his fingers through her hair; one of her legs was draped over his. And she hoped he was fine with her spending the rest of the night, because she had no plans to leave for a while.

* * *

_An unexpected benefit of the Wasp suit was the ability to avoid a walk of shame._ Granted, it wouldn’t be one here. Just a walk towards arrest probably- if the FBI caught sight of her.

Ducking her head to not hit it on the slanted roof, she crawled out of bed in order to rummage through her clothes that she had folded and put on his desk chair.

 _I should probably bring some clothes over to keep here,_ she thought, pulling out a pair of pants from the stack. _But would that be weird?_

That would carry the assumption that everything would work out. And they still had a lot to talk about, things they maybe should have said before they had fallen into bed and slept together for the first time in years. She supposed they had just reached the point of not wanting to be lonely anymore. 

She buttoned up her shirt right as she heard the refrigerator in the downstairs kitchen shut and she made her way down the stairs. It was just the two of them, and late spring sunshine shone through the windows.

“We were out of Eggo waffles,” he said as she walked into the kitchen. “But we had everything for pancakes so I thought I’d mix it up.” He grinned at her, the grin that made her melt every time. 

She went up to him and wrapped her arms around him, kissing him like it was the old days again. His arms went around her waist, and everything felt familiar and oh so right. 

“So uh,” he continued, “ _This._ ”

He didn’t need to specify any further, not really. They both knew what it was, but was it new or rather a continuation of whatever they had before? Hope wasn’t entirely sure, but they’d figure it out.

* * *

When Hope wasn’t with her parents at their newly hidden house, she was at Scott’s. It was a sense of stability and quiet she hadn’t had for two years. 

Usually, she spent the days with her parents. Hope had gotten used to spending the night at his place, often just the two of them. It reminded her of all the time they had spent together so long ago, figuring things out between them. And now they were figuring things out yet again.

She had slept in particularly late that day (and for once she couldn’t even blame herself. She hadn’t slept well in what felt like two years), and had woken up particularly cold, colder than normal, considering Scott was about as warm as a space heater most days. She sat up to see that Scott was vacant from his side of the bed. 

She figured he was probably downstairs, or he had gone into the X-Con office and there’d be a Post-It note telling her he’d be back later. She doubted that anyone else would be in the house, so she didn’t bother changing out of the oversized Rush t-shirt she had stolen from Scott’s closet to wear as pajamas.

Hope walked down the stairs to go to the kitchen, only to be greeted by Jim Paxton. 

It was safe to say that neither of them expected the other to be there.

Paxton was the first to speak, blinking. 

“Hope?” he asked, stunned. 

“Hi?”

He blinked again. “Uh, didn’t expect to see you here.”

“I could say the same.”

“ _Hope?_ ” 

The two of them turned to see Maggie walk into the room, the same stunned expression on her face that Paxton had. 

None of them quite knew what to say. 

_Oh, fuck._

Luckily, Scott walked in to save the day. He stepped into the room and froze like the rest of them. 

“Well, I guess I have some explaining to do.”

She could think of an escape route easily. Get her shrunken Wasp suit from the desk and fly off for the day. But that wasn’t a great way to solve her problems.

She went up and rummaged through the spot she had claimed in his closet, where she’d thrown some of her own things, changing into a (slightly) wrinkled blouse and jeans. It would do.

Hope walked back downstairs to the kitchen. Scott had made coffee for the four of them, and a mug made just the way she took her coffee sat in front of the only vacant spot at the table. Maggie was tapping her foot anxiously.

“It’s nice to see you again, Hope,” she said as Hope took her seat at the table, wrapping a hand around her mug.

“It’s nice to see you too.”

Maggie looked back and forth between Hope and Paxton, unsure what to say. Hope didn’t blame her.

Maggie started the conversation.

“Have…” Maggie paused. “Have you two… been together these past two years?”

Scott winced. “No. No, we did break up. We only…” He also tried to find the right words.

It was a long story. Scott took the reins, telling them in the most simplistic terms possible about what had happened. She wasn’t entirely sure Maggie and Paxton knew what a quantum tunnel was, or even what the quantum realm was, but they nodded along nonetheless.

They both took it much better than Hope thought they would. Granted, the last time she’d seen Maggie and Paxton was two years ago, when their relationship with Scott had only just started getting better. Paxton seemed to have mellowed; if Scott had broken the law again back then, Paxton would have already arrested him.

Where _did_ their relationship stand? Hope wasn’t sure she entirely knew. They hadn’t said anything- had just fallen into a routine, much like they had all that time ago. He remembered the way she took her coffee and made it every time she stayed over for the night, and if one of them was sitting on the couch, the other didn’t hesitate to sit as close as possible. Hope was pretty sure she’d been kissed more in the past couple weeks than she had her entire life; absence really did make the heart grow fonder and she couldn’t even complain.

“Well,” Maggie said eventually, “we do have to pick up Cassie soon, best that we head off.”

The second they left, Scott began:

“I didn’t even know they’d be coming over. They texted me last night and I didn’t see it.” He’d always been bad at checking his phone and with… other events the night previously, he truly wouldn’t have had time to check it.

“I thought we’d chat and they’d be gone before you came downstairs. But there was too much to talk about.”

“Next time,” Hope said. “Can you just- send me a text? Or leave me a note? So we can avoid this embarrassment next time?”

But luckily, her embarrassment would subside. Eventually.

* * *

“Does this happen often?” her mother asked. 

Hope looked up from her mug of tea. 

Janet gestured towards the door that led to the big room of the lab, where Scott was currently trying to convince Hank of the convenience of shrinking the quantum tunnel to fit in the back of the X-Con Security Consultants Van. 

“Scott trying to convince Dad about bad ideas?”

“Well, I don’t think _that_ idea is necessarily bad. It’s good to be on the go. It can always be regrown.”

Her mother sat down next to her. 

“I like him.”

Hope took a glance at her. “What?”

“He’s nice. And very polite. I think you two are good together.”

Hope stared.

Her mother patted her hand. “I’m observant. And we shared thoughts. Besides, I like to think that even after thirty years, I know my daughter well enough.”

Hope looked at the floor. “I’m not even sure how things are right now between us.” And she couldn’t lie that it was hard, because she had loved him and wanted him back for two years, and simultaneously, she was still on the run. Nothing would ever be the same again.

But everything was growing and changing. That was the nature of things.

* * *

The weeks continued and the late spring bled into the summer, and the days grew longer and longer. Scott took the Hot Wheels case and made a drive in movie theatre, and they set it up every single time Cassie came over. She was invited over to dinner at Maggie and Paxton’s house again, and despite the secrecy, despite the hiding, it was almost like normal.

“Can I say something _really_ cheesy?” Scott asked as Hope walked back into his room and crawled back on the bed. The room was small enough that it had to be tucked into a corner, right where the roof slanted.

“Sure,” Hope said, her head hitting the pillow. She looked over at him.

“Sometimes, I genuinely think it’s all a dream.”

“Oh, that’s definitely the cheesiest thing you’ve ever said.”

He sat up on his elbow, grinning that he grin he always had, and he leaned down to kiss her. Her hand couldn’t help but reach up to run her fingers through his hair. 

And maybe she could buy into the cheesiness for a moment.

He let go and laid his head back down next to her, pressing a kiss to her upper arm. With her opposite hand, she kept running her fingers through his hair. The lamp next to his bed painted them both in a yellow glow, and deep down she felt warm. 

Hope hadn’t been with a lot of people in her life. At the very least, she had rarely committed to a long term thing. But there really was something when you laid in bed at night with a love, a secret the two of you shared. 

And it was the part of her that was stupidly in love that didn’t want to be torn apart from him again. He had found his way past her walls all those years ago and he had never ever left. 

She had already spent too long at his house that day, and he had to go in early to work on security systems for X-Con, which meant they both needed to go to bed. But another few minutes together wouldn’t hurt.

* * *

Her hair had grown a lot longer in those two years. She hadn’t had a chance to get it cut, since she had been tucked away in the lab most days.

It was easier to keep back than a bob as well, much easier for wearing the Wasp suit.

When they were alone though, whether she was stuck reading some science journal or they were curled up somewhere, Scott’s hand would make his way to her hair so he could run his fingers through the strands, all the way to the tips, working his way gently through any tangles. 

And she’d be lying to herself if she said she didn’t like it.

Something had been unspoken for a while. She was almost tempted to say it then. 

_I love you._

She didn’t know why, but she stopped herself. There would be more time later. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed. Comments and kudos are always loved and appreciated.


End file.
